


The Greatest Way

by nowrunalong



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, DC Animated Universe (Timmverse), DC Extended Universe, Justice League (2017)
Genre: Character Study, Communication Failure, Conversations, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M, Superbat Big Bang 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-25 14:35:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20027413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nowrunalong/pseuds/nowrunalong
Summary: After a year together, Bruce and Clark are having troubles. To better their relationship, they agree to answer a series of questions designed to foster emotional intimacy.It goes about as well as you'd expect.





	The Greatest Way

**Author's Note:**

> While this fic is set a couple years after Justice League 2017, it briefly draws on elements from animated media (namely The New Batman Adventures, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, and Batman: Under the Red Hood) for Bruce's backstory. No specific knowledge of these continuities is necessary.
> 
> Thank you to Susie, Dusty, Sai, Andro, and the folks in the SBB writersroom for their help and encouragement as I worked on this project. I had a long blurb typed up here and somehow managed to lose it, BUT PLEASE KNOW THAT I APPRECIATE YOU ALL IMMENSELY.
> 
> Also, THERE IS ART!! Please please please visit [Barry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/barrybinary/works)'s EMOTIONAL ART OF BABY BRUCE [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20034793), and [Andro](https://archiveofourown.org/users/androbeaurepaire/works)'s art of BRUCE AND CLARK BEING COMPLETE DOORKNOBS [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20033356) (AO3) or [here](https://androbeaurepaire.tumblr.com/post/186645658689/) (Tumblr)! I can't thank you both enough for finding something of interest in my summary and then following through to create such kickass art.

**Present Day**

Bruce watches warily as Diana removes the lariat from her hip. It glows at the contact of her fingers, and then fades again when she sets it down on the Hall’s meeting table.

It’s not that Bruce is afraid of its influence; rather, he doesn’t like what he can’t control, and magic forcing words up and out of his mouth without his consent is particularly deserving of his mistrust.

“We won’t need this.”

Diana regards him for a moment without speaking. Standing, she cuts an imposing figure. If Bruce were anyone else, he would cower under her narrowed eyes. As it is, he suspects she can see the truth of him even without the lariat.

“Maybe not,” she allows. She makes no move to reclaim it, however. “The list comprises twenty questions. I will be outside if you need me.”

She touches his shoulder before she goes; they’ve known each other long enough now that it should feel like a reassurance, but it takes all of Bruce’s effort not to let the tension at his core seep outward into the rest of him.

He doesn’t succeed; his posture stiffens under the gentle pressure of her hand.

Clark notices. Of course he notices.

“You’re uncomfortable,” he says, as soon as Diana has left the room.

He sits opposite Bruce, arms crossed in front of him on the table, half-concealing the emblem emblazoned on his chest. Earlier, the entire League had gathered here. Now they’re alone, and Bruce can’t avoid his gaze any longer. Clark’s blue eyes are soft with concern. A nameless unease churns in Bruce’s gut.

“We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, Bruce.”

Bruce takes a breath and tries to ease the tension from his shoulders on the exhale. Whether or not he wants to do this is irrelevant. There’s something wrong here, and he’ll do what needs to be done to fix it. If this is a viable solution—

“It’s fine, Clark.”

Bruce lays a hand on the table, palm up, and Clark reaches for him automatically, covering Bruce’s hand with his own. Bruce slides a thumb across Clark’s knuckles, a gentle reassurance, and watches Clark’s face as the corners of his mouth turn up into a hesitant smile, smoothing away his worry lines so effectively it’s as if they’d never been there.

The warmth in his eyes is so intense that Bruce wants to look away. Should. Can’t.

“Bruce,” Clark says.

Bruce knows what Clark is going to say. It’s fine. Everything is fine. He can—it’s fine.

Clark’s grip on Bruce’s hand tightens. There was a time when Bruce would think about how easily that grip could crush his bones, if that was what Clark wanted. Now, it’s a tether to a sense of security, of safety, of comfort Bruce hadn’t believed in before he’d met him.

“I love you,” Clark says—and Bruce has never known what to say to that, not ever, so he says nothing. “And no matter what you say here, nothing is going to change that.”

Bruce takes another slow breath to steady his voice. “I know.”

“Okay.” Clark smiles again.

Bruce wants to pull him in, to hold him close, but now isn’t the time for that. He gives Clark’s fingers a squeeze, and then pulls his hand back.

“I can read the questions?” Clark offers. He accepts Bruce’s silence as the grudging agreement it is and skims a hand over the paper on the table as he reads the words printed on it. “There are twenty in total.”

“I know.”

“Oh, right. Diana mentioned that.”

They look at each other for a moment, wordless, and then Clark clears his throat.

“Well, I’ll just start, then.” The questionnaire is printed on two sheets of paper. Clark taps them on the table to perfectly align them, and then sets them back down on the table. “Question one,” he reads, in a loud, clear voice. “‘Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?’”

“That’s a question?”

“I’m not making this up, Bruce. Do you want me to go first?”

“Sure.”

Clark leans forward a little on his elbows. “Okay. This one is easy for me. I’d want you to meet my parents. I mean, you know Mom already, but—both of them. We’d fly out to Kansas, and… Dad would be there.”

“I’m not sure your father would approve of me,” Bruce says with a wry smile.

Clark’s answering smile is fond. “You’d win him over. You work hard, and you have good values. Dad would respect that.”

“Oh, is _that_ how I won you over?”

“You’re a good man, Bruce. That’s what won me over.”

“Hm,” Bruce says. “So when you invited me to dinner with your mother, and then cornered me in the barn—that was because of my… good values.”

Clark grins. “You’re the one who asked to see Dad’s old tractor.”

“I think your dad’s old tractor has seen too much.”

“If you mention that at my fictional dinner, you’re sleeping in the barn,” Clark says, mock-serious. And then: “You’re trying to distract me. It won’t work.”

“Just reminiscing,” Bruce says lightly.

“Who are you inviting to your dinner?”

Bruce pretends to think about it. “You,” he says.

“Ha, ha. Very funny.”

“It wasn’t meant as a joke. You chose three people as guests, myself included. The author of this questionnaire most likely intended for participants to choose one person only. Given my pick of anyone in the world, there is no one else I would rather have dinner with.”

Clark softens a little, but he still doesn’t look convinced. “Bruce. You don’t have to choose someone who’s still—”

“I’m choosing you,” Bruce says firmly. “What’s the next question?”

Bruce thinks for a moment that Clark is about to reach for him—his fingers twitch where they lie against the tabletop, but he draws them into fists and folds his arms in front of his chest again. 

“Question two,” he reads aloud, hunching forward to look at the paper. “‘Would you like to be famous? In what way?’”

Bruce huffs out a laugh. “More like infamous.”

“Your reputation isn't that bad.”

“It’s better than it used to be,” Bruce allows. “At any rate, whether or not I like it is irrelevant.”

“It’s something you’ve always had to deal with,” Clark says, nodding.

“But you haven’t.”

“Not until I was thirty-three.”

“You never wanted the attention.” It’s a statement, not a question; Bruce knows Clark well enough to be certain of this. “You spent your entire life hiding.”

Clark gives him a tiny smile. “At least I’m only Superman part of the time. You’re one of Gotham’s most famous residents two times over. I don’t envy that. The entire world watches Superman constantly—and maybe they should. I should be accountable to its citizens. But if that was my life all the time, I’d go crazy.”

“And yet you agreed to be involved with ‘one of Gotham’s most famous residents, two times over’.”

“I love that your concern is that I’m with you even though you’re rich and famous, not because you’re rich and famous,” Clark says, smile widening. “Seems like the opposite of the usual question.”

“The thought that you might be a gold digger did cross my mind.”

“What—really?”

“Of course not. Don’t be absurd.”

Clark grins as he picks up the questionnaire again. “I wouldn’t dream of it. Next question is, ‘Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?’”

“No,” Bruce says.

“Never?”

“What? You rehearse what you’re going to say?”

Clark looks steadily back at him, a thoughtful frown thinning the line of his mouth. “Sometimes. If it matters. If it’s something that I’m afraid to talk about. In those cases, figuring out what to say beforehand makes it a little less scary.”

Bruce has made it his life’s work to be either a bumbling annoyance or a raspy-voiced terror on the phone; neither requires much fear on his own part. 

He steeples his fingers under his chin. “If you say so.”

“I do,” Clark says. “Question four is, ‘What would constitute a "perfect" day for you?’”

Bruce raises an eyebrow.

“And,” Clark adds, holding up a finger, “no spoiling the fun by going ‘there’s no such thing as a perfect day’. You can say anything, which means that you can wish for impossible things.”

Bruce doesn’t dare, but impossible things flock to him regardless. Clark is an impossible thing. Bruce tried to kill him, for fuck’s sake, and Clark is still here with him, bringing him coffee in the morning.

(If Bruce does have an impossible wish now, it’s that he’ll stay—

As if holding him, solid and strong and warm under Bruce’s fingertips, could keep him here.)

“I don’t know,” Bruce says after a moment. He doesn’t. The concept of perfection in and of itself is flawed. The closest thing he’s found is the man currently sitting across from him—and Clark takes his coffee with four creamers and hogs the mattress at night.

He doesn’t even need to sleep, damn him.

Clark leans forward on his elbows. “I have some ideas.”

“Do tell.”

“Okay. First off, we’re on vacation. All day. No League duties.”

“Already delving into the realm of ‘impossible’, I see,” Bruce says dryly.

“I’d say ‘very funny’ again, but—God, it’s been ages. We _need_ to take some time off. When was our last weekend?”

They’d taken two days for Clark’s birthday three months ago. Bruce can read the exact moment Clark remembers this in the tinge of pink creeping up his cheeks.

Bruce’s smirk grows wider. “That was a memorable weekend.” 

“God, yes.”

“But it wasn’t perfect.”

Clark purses his lips, but he doesn’t disagree. “Well,” he says, after a moment. “I think we tried. To make it perfect, I mean.”

Bruce had planned the weekend for them. They’d gone to Rome and visited four historical sites, two museums, and six different restaurants.

For all the time they’d spent sightseeing, however, the few hours they’d spent entirely indoors and alone at the hotel had somehow been the most memorable part.

Perhaps it had just been that Bruce had already seen Rome. Next time, maybe it would be better to take Clark somewhere entirely new.

“You mentioned having ideas,” he reminds Clark.

“Yes!” Clark says, perking up. “So—we’re on vacation. One hundred percent. We have breakfast in the morning and we get to take as much time as we want, because we don’t have to go to work.”

Bruce smiles crookedly. “Sure. You’re cooking, though.”

“I was actually thinking we’d go to Mom’s first thing. You know, say hi, eat endless stacks of buttermilk pancakes and blueberries.” Clark smiles so beatifically that Bruce can’t even manage a smartass comment about going to his mother’s house on a date. “It’s already sunny out. I don’t see you in the morning light often enough—I’d like that.”

“I look best in the dark,” Bruce says, deadpan. He’s only half-joking; he’ll be fifty soon, and the daylight doesn’t do much to conceal the lines on his face, etched deeper around the corners of his eyes and mouth with every year that passes.

“Shush,” Clark says fondly. “You look good in anything.” Before Bruce can address that with the innuendo it deserves, he adds: “Next, we go somewhere we’ve never been. Someplace busy, maybe, like Santorini. We walk around and hold hands and try to blend in with the locals, you know, we visit a market and eat cherry tomatoes and ask someone passing by to take a picture of us on the beach. It’s warm, so you roll your sleeves up. We go to dinner at a little hole-in-the-wall place with authentic food. Then we go home, and you lose the shirt.”

Bruce has a multitude of thoughts about this he doesn’t want to untangle right now; best to dismiss the problem with practicalities. “Flying to Santorini is likely to take at least fourteen hours. We’d have to leave the night before to get there in good time, and even then we’d only have a few hours to look around before we’d have to leave again. By the time we got home, I’d be too jetlagged to do anything but drool on your shoulder.”

“We wouldn’t take a _plane_, Bruce,” Clark says, eyebrows raised.

“You’re not carrying me to Santorini.”

Clark grins. “In my daydream, you’ll let me carry you anywhere.”

“Hm.”

“So?” Clark asks, leaning forward a more on his elbows. “Have you thought of what you’d do for your day yet?”

“No.”

“Okay. Well—you can just make something up. There’s no right or wrong answer here. Any old thing works.” Clark smiles encouragingly and waits.

Bruce looks back at him until he can’t anymore—until the softness of Clark’s face, the openness of his pose, is too much to bear in the moment. He shifts his gaze to the left; late afternoon sunlight still pores into the Hall through the windows, illuminating Clark from behind. The red of his cape seems to glow where it rests atop his shoulders.

Bruce’s thoughts move like molasses down a ten-degree incline—but not even that, because progress is progress, regardless of how slowly it moves. It’s a circular type of thinking he’s caged himself into, inexorable as Earth’s orbit, and the sun is a pistol fired thirty-nine years ago.

He can’t think of an answer that Clark will want to hear.

At Bruce’s continued silence, Clark moves a hand to the side of his face and pushes his fingers through his hair, ruffling Superman’s unflappable image; a stray curl escapes, falling over his forehead. His hunched posture makes him seem smaller—more Clark Kent than Superman, despite the cape he’s wearing. “Please,” he says. He drops his hand back down to the table, clasps it in the other, and looks at Bruce again. “It doesn’t have to be perfect, Bruce. It can just be good.”

Clark’s perfect day is something in his control; something he can make for himself. Bruce’s perfect day will never—could never—come true. He’s dedicated his whole life to fighting for it. He knows better than anyone that wishing for a crime-free day in Gotham would be fruitless.

His eyes drag back to meet Clark’s. Dammit, Bruce owes him a response.

“I liked your day,” he says slowly. “Can I make a suggestion?”

Clark inclines his head in a tiny nod; wariness dulls the otherworldly blue of his eyes with a heavy-lidded frown.

“Waffles,” Bruce says.

“Waffles?”

“Instead of pancakes. Belgian waffles. Fresh whipped cream. Strawberries.”

Once again, Bruce is transfixed as Clark’s tension visibly melts away—not as completely as it had earlier, but enough that a hint of a smile returns to lift up the corners of his mouth. “I thought you didn’t want to cook.”

“Well, I’m sure your mother makes a mean waffle.”

“I’m sure she would, if she had a waffle iron. What’s wrong with pancakes?”

“Nothing’s wrong with pancakes,” Bruce says. “But waffles are more decadent.”

“You can fit more toppings on them,” Clark says agreeably. “‘Cause of the little holes. The berries don’t all roll off. And the syrup doesn’t run off the sides, either.”

“Decadent.”

“All right. Waffles it is.”

“We’ll get your mother a waffle iron for her birthday.”

This warms Clark’s expression, too. “Skillet pancakes are better,” he adds, with a hint of mischievousness. “But I’m on board. Next question?”

“Yes.”

“Five: ‘When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?’”

“Jesus,” Bruce says, and Clark actually laughs. Three minutes ago he seemed about to give up on Bruce altogether. Bruce is going to get whiplash.

“You could answer this question for both of us,” Clark suggests, eyes bright.

It’s an easy question. Bruce accepts it as the olive branch it is.

“I don’t sing,” Bruce says. “And if you ever want me to go with you to karaoke night again, for the love of God, Clark, get some better music.”

“You love it when I sing John Denver.”

Bruce doesn’t dignify that with a response.

“Carly Rae Jepsen?”

“Clark,” Bruce groans.

“C’mon; she’s great. Her stuff is so upbeat, you can’t help but dance when you hear it. I bet _Emotion_ would be good workout music. You should try working out to music, B. Lifting weights in complete silence with half the lights off can’t be very fun.”

“It’s not supposed to be ‘fun’. It’s training.”

“You can have both, you know,” Clark says.

“Next question.”

Clark looks at the questionnaire and winces slightly.

“What?”

“Oh, it’s—the next one is a bit of a doozy. Sorry.”

“What is it?”

The smile on Clark’s face is apologetic as he reads the question. “‘Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?’”

“Clark—”

“Bruce… don’t. I’m going to answer the question, okay? Because—it’s fine. I died. I was dead for six months. And it did change things. It _did_ shatter any illusions I had about dying of old age.” He looks Bruce in the eye. “As long as I’m Superman, someone’s going to want me dead.”

**September, 1981**

Bruce kneels in the street.

Rainwater pools on the asphalt and soaks his shoes. The sudden downpour has plastered his hair to his face, and it runs in rivulets from his forehead down his cheeks. His whole body is wracked with tremors, but the chill—clinging to his skin, dress pants plastered to his thighs—isn’t in his frame of conscious awareness. His breaths come in so quick and shallow that he’s light-headed from it. He can’t think, can’t see straight. His thoughts circle in a loop and bring him right back here, to the feeling of his mother sprawled, cold, beneath his white-knuckled fingers.

He squeezes his eyes shut, presses his face into his mother’s shoulder, and continues to shake. His hands are wound tight into her woollen coat. Maybe if he holds on tight enough—

Sirens. Bruce’s eyes half-open, but he doesn’t let go.

Lights flash red and blue, illuminating the alleyway; something sparkles at the edge of his peripheral vision, caught at the seam of a gutter. There are voices behind him—Bruce can’t make out what they’re saying. Doesn’t try, either. The sound of car doors opening and then slamming shut reverberates in the alley. His mother doesn’t move.

The voices get closer.

“Jesus Christ, is that—”

“—Thomas and Martha—”

“—Wayne? _Jesus_, and that’s—”

“Bruce?” a voice says, directly behind him. There’s a hand on his shoulder, someone crouching at his side. Bruce buries his face into his mother’s coat and doesn’t turn around. She’s cold. She’s cold. She’s—

“Son, you need to let go now.”

_No!_

If Bruce lets go, his mother might disappear. There are more people arriving—an ambulance, a stretcher, officers wearing reflective stripes and solemn faces. If Bruce lets go—

“I’m sorry, but we need to check her vitals. It’ll be alright.”

Bruce is lifted bodily from his mother, his shoulders tugged upward so that he is no longer draped across her, but he won’t let go. Doesn’t, until his fingers are pried from the lapels of her coat.

When they are—when Bruce’s grasping hands close around nothing but damp September air—he goes limp in the policeman’s arms.

His mother is gone.

“Kid’s strong. Probably in shock.”

He lets himself be carried to the back of the ambulance where someone wraps a blanket around his shoulders and tells him to sit tight. His body is numb; he couldn’t move even if he wanted to. EMS swarms around his mother and father in the street. They say things like “we’re too late” and “been dead for at least half an hour” and “Jesus fucking Christ, Gordon, the kid must have been here when it happened”. His fingers hurt; he curls them into fists, and then stretches them again. Pain burns in his knuckles. He does it again.

In the street, two men are lifting his father like a ragdoll. His arms hang down, fingers slack; rainwater runs down them and onto the asphalt. Earlier, those arms had lifted Bruce up onto his shoulders as easily as if he’d still been four years old.

His teeth chatter.

The rain has washed the red from his mother’s face. She still seems wrong. Bruce shuts his eyes tight again.

He stays there, motionless and unspeaking, until Alfred arrives.

**Present Day**

“I’ve accepted it.”

Clark says this very calmly. Each evenly-delivered word paired with his relentless effort to maintain eye contact feels like water washing over Bruce’s head, crushing the air from his lungs.

‘It’. His death. Clark’s—

“No,” Bruce says. His voice sounds rough, even to his ears. Across the table, Clark frowns.

“Bruce, it’s okay. Really, I’m fine.”

“You—” Bruce starts, and then bites off the rest of the sentence. He doesn’t talk about this.

(He’s _here_ to talk about this.)

He’s pointing a finger in Clark’s direction; it feels accusatory, but he doesn’t put it down. “You’re not supposed to be like us.”

Clark’s frown deepens with concern. “No one lives forever, Bruce.”

“Superman is a beacon! An immovable force. A permanent fixture. When you were… It’s _wrong_. It’s…”

—_fingers pried away from a rain-soaked jacket_—

Bruce drops his hand to the table, and it connects with an unexpectedly loud slap. In the quiet vastness of the Hall, it seems even louder. He recoils infinitesimally. 

“Bruce.”

It’s the Superman voice—the one Clark uses to soothe people he’s pulled from fires, people in shock who would have lost their lives if not for him. Under any other circumstance, Bruce would roll his eyes at Clark turning it on him.

“Bruce—hey. Look at me.”

Bruce does. The familiar blue of Clark’s eyes is tinged with confusion.

It’s been three whole years since Bruce wrenched him back.

“It’s okay,” Clark repeats. “I’m not permanent. I’m not, and neither are you, and it’s okay.”

“I know that.”

He does. Bruce knows all too well that even immovable objects fall. They shouldn’t, but they do. The wrongness makes him grind his teeth together.

“You don’t have to answer this one. We can skip to the—”

“My answer is the same as yours.”

Clark looks back at him unflinchingly. The unabashed concern on his face makes it both more difficult and more necessary to say the words.

“As long as I’m Batman, someone’s going to want me dead.”

“How old were you,” Clark asks, “when you decided that?”

_Nine._

Bruce has never had illusions about dying of old age.

“Twenty-four,” he says.

“That’s when you became the Bat.”

Bruce is forty-eight, now. It’s been half a lifetime.

“Yes.”

“But you don’t have to be.”

Bruce looks Clark in the eye. Clark, who dons that godforsaken cape because the world expects it of him—who puts himself in front of them to be judged and scrutinized because he’s too damn good and selfless to be anything other than the hero he believes they deserve.

“Neither do you.”

The unspoken truth is that Clark won’t give up on the world any sooner than Bruce will give up on Gotham. They’ll wear these capes until they die.

“Well,” Clark says, with a lightness that Bruce doubts he feels, “I think it’s time we move on to the next question. Shall we?”

Bruce crosses his arms. “Shoot.”

Clark side-eyes his flippancy, but doesn’t comment on it. “‘Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.’”

“Apparently we both expect to meet sticky and unnatural ends.”

“Charming,” Clark says. And then: “We both have a mother called Martha.”

Bruce refuses to react to that. “We’re both wearing capes.”

“And that’s three. ‘For what in your life do you feel the most grateful?’”

“You first.”

“Fine,” Clark says. “I’m grateful that I’ve always had a support system. I’m grateful that I’ve always had love for others, and that I’ve been loved in return.” He looks at Bruce. “Now you. And it doesn’t have to be ‘most’, Bruce. Anything goes.”

Bruce frowns. It’s entirely his own fault he’s doing this, but he still finds himself inwardly cursing Diana for suggesting it.

He speaks slowly when he answers—gives each word a weight as deliberate as the blow of a hammer, like he’ll purple his own thumb if he misses the mark. “I’ve always… had the trust of the people I respect.” He looks at Clark, steady. “Whether I deserved it or not.”

“Bruce,” Clark says immediately, “you always will.”

Bruce has no response to that.

He thinks briefly that Clark is going to say something else, although in the end, he doesn’t. They’re both silent for a long moment. The sun has moved lower on the horizon; it’s nearly obscured by the treeline, now.

“Only two more questions till we’re halfway through,” Clark says eventually. “And—it might be best to skip the next one.”

“Why?”

“It’s not necessary.”

“Read it.”

“‘If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?’”

Bruce keeps his face neutral. Under the table, his hands curl into fists; his nails are blunt, but he squeezes till he can feel them digging into his palm. “And you?” he asks. “What would your answer be?”

“Nothing. I wouldn’t change anything. Not even to know Lara and Jor-El.”

Sometimes Bruce almost forgets Clark had lost his parents, too. It’s easy to forget because he still has a mother; because he visits her every weekend.

“Question ten,” Clark says, making the executive decision to move ahead. “‘Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.’ You can start.”

“Can I.”

“Well, I’d appreciate it,” Clark says.

“You’re familiar with this story.”

“I still want to hear it.”

“Born in Gotham, raised in Gotham,” Bruce starts, like he’s reeling off a list. “Parents died in Gotham. Went to college in Gotham. Met someone in Gotham. It didn’t work out. Left Gotham, traveled the world, learned a thing or two about surviving. Returned to Gotham. Became the Bat, let Lucius run the company. Took on a partner for a while. It didn’t work out. Kryptonians pulverized Metropolis and the world was introduced to Superman. Tried to kill him. It didn’t work out. Now we fight monsters together with a team of metahumans, I’m friends with his mother, and he takes Alfred’s side in arguments. Am I forgetting something?”

“You tell me, B. It’s your life.”

“You know my life as well as anyone, lately.”

“Except Alfred,” Clark says reflexively. And then: “I always want to hear more about your earlier life. You know—pre-League days, before you were fighting things from other worlds.”

Clark’s gone looking; Bruce knows. Media coverage of the Gotham Bat was mostly rumors and speculation then. Nothing conclusive. Not like now. His involvement with the League has made Batman high-profile news.

Still. “Really,” he says airily. “It doesn’t matter at all.”

**December, 2002**

It’s cold outside. As the Bat, he feels it less: the suit he wears protects him from gunfire and winter winds alike. Tonight, however, he’s just Bruce Wayne, and Gucci isn’t made to withstand the elements.

“You were going to pay for his surgery,” Gordon says, sidling up next to him. “Weren’t you? That’s why he was allowed out.”

“Yes. I’ve been paying for counseling, too. I—Harvey is a good man.”

“He was. Do you still think so?”

Bruce stuffs his hands into the pocket of his coat and shrugs, forced nonchalance. Five minutes ago, Harvey Dent had looked him in the eye, perfectly lucid, and acknowledged that Bruce hadn’t given up on him.

“He was my friend,” Bruce says.

A good man. The _best_ man. A citizen with upstanding morals and genuine concern for his city. A hero who had accomplished more within the law—had made more of a difference—than Bruce likely ever will, no matter the means he uses. If Bruce had bet on anyone in Gotham being incorruptible, it would have been Harvey Dent.

But in the end, not even Harvey had been immune.

Gordon looks him in the eye. “He was my friend, too. God knows I’d like to see him get better, but he’s done too much now to—”

“I’m aware, Commissioner.”

It’s Arkham Asylum for life, after this. Jesus, Bruce was a fool to keep hoping. Believing. He should have learned by now that ‘incorruptible’ doesn’t exist. No one stays good in this world.

“It’s a damn shame,” Gordon says. “Harvey was the best of us.”

Was.

The last time Harvey had been shut up in Arkham, Bruce had visited him. He’d sat with his back against the wall—his good side to Bruce, his other side turned away from view. He had seemed well despite the circumstances.

“The Bat,” he’d said to Bruce, “isn’t what they say.”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Bruce had answered pleasantly.

“They say he’s a monster. Some aren’t convinced he’s even human. But he’s necessary, Bruce. Until the system we’re working within isn’t bent to hell and back, he’s necessary. Maybe the day will come when Gotham has a proper justice system in place. Cops who don’t take bribes, who don’t put the narcotics they’ve confiscated back on the street just to fill their own pockets. And if that day comes, we won’t need an unpredictable vigilante working outside the law. But until then…”

Bruce had considered this. “You still believe in that dream. You still believe in—”

“Gotham,” Harvey had said. “Yes.”

And Bruce had believed him.

Believed _in_ him.

Maybe it’s own damn fault that people have died here.

**Present Day**

Clark arches an eyebrow. “You don’t expect me to believe that.”

“Why not? Everyone else believes everything they read about me.”

“Well, the bits about your true identity as an eldritch abomination are a bit of a stretch,” Clark says lightly, not rising to the fight. “And I was researching you… before. You know that.”

“It’s your turn to answer the million-dollar question,” Bruce says.

“Are you worried that I’ll—what?” Clark asks, persistent. “Disapprove of your old methods?”

“You disapprove of my current methods.”

“Sometimes,” Clark agrees.

“Your life story, Superman. Four minutes. Enthrall me.”

“Well, you asked for it,” Clark says. “You’re the best person to talk about this with, really, since you’re the only person I know whose life is even close to being as strange as mine.” Clark flashes Bruce a grin, takes a deep breath, and starts talking on the exhale. “I was raised on a farm in Kansas. It was nice, and quiet, but it didn’t always seem that way. Everything was bright, and loud, and it was hard to be around other people. My parents did their best to help me. My mom was my lifeline in those early years. Still is.

“Eventually I learned to tune out the noise, and it got a little easier. I was always different, and I think everyone knew it, but I made some friends, and that helped too. Sometimes I was in a position to help people, and they noticed I could do things that other people couldn’t. My dad told me the truth—he told me that I was born on another world, and that somewhere I had another mother and father.

“After he died, I spent years traveling, just like you did. Mostly working. Searching. Figuring out how to be around people, how to blend in. I figured I owed it to him, to myself, to find out where I came from. It wasn’t easy. Whenever someone started to realize what I could do, I had to leave. I was in Yellowknife when an archaeological team found the scout ship. I was able to connect an AI imprint of my birth father to the ship. That’s when I learned about my him and my mother—Jor-El and Lara—and about Krypton.

“I had no idea that accessing the ship would trigger a distress beacon. Outlaws from Krypton were able to trace it here. You’re familiar with this part.”

Bruce is familiar with all of this, and Clark’s four minutes are up. Bruce doesn’t stop him.

“I moved to Metropolis after that. Got a job at the Daily Planet to help keep my ear to the ground. Moved in with Lois.” Clark is ticking things off on his fingers as he speaks, like he’s afraid he’ll miss something vital. “Had my interest piqued by some vigilante in Gotham. Bought a ring. Died.”

Bruce should really say something.

“Came back to life after months,” Clark continues. “Turns out the guy who brought me back was the same guy who tried to kill me, except now he’s trying to be a team player. Lois gave me my ring back. The Gotham Bat asked me to work with him, and I got to know him, in and out of costume. Turned out he wasn’t as much of an ass as he’d pretended to be when we first met. Most of the time, anyway. He was kind of always around. It was comforting. It felt like the universe had picked my life up, shaken it around, and then dropped it back down on its head. But the Bat—well, maybe it’s because I didn’t know him before, but it wasn’t weird, being around him. It was comfortable in a way that didn’t really make sense. _Shouldn’t_ have made sense, considering he’d wanted me dead a year ago.

“He was also really hot, which one couldn’t help but notice. I started to think I’d like him around even more. Maybe in a different way. He seemed pretty into that idea. Fast forward a year and a half-dozen near-apocalyptic events, and… here we are.”

Bruce gives Clark a moment’s pause, in case he’s not finished, but Clark just shrugs his shoulders and clasps his hands together in front of him.

“That was a much better story than mine,” Bruce says. “Do you go over word count on your Planet assignments, too?”

Clark blinks. “I know you don’t love doing the story-sharing thing, but a response that isn’t a cheap jab about passing the four-minute-mark would be great.”

“I wasn’t timing.”

“Sure you weren’t.”

“You just said nice things about me. I don’t respond well to nice things.”

Bruce means it as a joke, a dismissal, and yet—and yet Clark just said that being around him was comfortable. It’s an unfamiliar word—certainly not one Bruce has ever associated with himself.

“I say nice things about you all the time,” Clark reminds him.

Bruce hasn’t gotten used to that, either.

“One more question,” Bruce decides. “And then we’ll call it a day.”

He thinks Clark might argue, but maybe he’s just as ready to be done with this as Bruce is, because he reads the next line without hesitation.

“‘If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?’”

“No.”

Jesus, Bruce should have called it quits at number ten.

“No?”

“It’s not that easy.”

“It’s hypothetical, Bruce.”

“If you—I wasn’t anything before. I was a child. It took me years to…” Bruce clenches his teeth for a moment. “I work for the abilities I have.”

Clark frowns slightly. “Bruce, I didn’t ask to have—”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Well, you obviously care about this. Do you think that I don’t view you as an equal because you’re human? No,” Clark says, slowly, “that’s not it. I know you resented me for my—my abilities, back when… I didn’t know you still felt that way.”

“I don’t.”

He doesn’t. If anyone deserves to be Superman, it’s Clark Kent. The Superman question—should there be a Superman?—has largely fallen away in the media, especially as more and more metahumans come into the light. There _is_ a Superman, and he’s every bit the hero Bruce hadn’t believed could exist.

The way Bruce feels is, in a way, unrelated to Clark altogether. It’s about self. It’s about what he deserves. And what he deserves is what he’s earned for himself. Nothing more or less.

(He probably hasn’t earned Clark’s affections, but that’s neither here nor there.)

“And you?” Bruce asks.

“I don’t know.” Clark looks pensive.

Bruce knows that Clark already has more abilities than he’d ever asked or wished for. A Daily Planet headline had once dubbed him ‘The Man Who Has Everything.’ The title isn’t entirely true, but it’s relevant enough here. What does a man who can fly have left to wish for?

“I—” Clark starts. Something resolves on his face and, unexpectedly, he grins.

“What?”

“I’d like the ability to do cryptic crosswords.”

“Crosswords,” Bruce repeats disbelievingly.

“Yeah.”

“You already _do_ the crossword.”

Clark scoffs. “You mean you do. I get one word in before you’ve finished the whole damn thing by yourself.”

This doesn’t happen very often, but only because mornings together that last long enough to solve the crossword are rare.

“I’m the World’s Greatest Detective,” Bruce deadpans. 

“And I’m an investigative journalist. I work with clues, too. You’ve had a lot more practice, though.”

“Well. Practice makes perfect.”

“Don’t spout cliches at me. It’s uncharacteristic.”

“Maybe it’s a clue.”

Clark crosses his arms. Uncrosses them again. Lays his forearms flat on the table, palms turned up, like Bruce had done earlier.

Bruce doesn’t hesitate to reach for him. Clark clasps both of Bruce’s hands in his own. He is warm and solid and real.

“I think that went okay,” he says.

“Sure.”

“Bruce, Diana was right. We—if we don’t talk, we’re going to keep feeling…”

Clark doesn’t finish the sentence. Has never finished it, in front of Bruce, just as Bruce has never finished it in front of him. It had been Diana that had ascertained their problem. She has an uncanny way of discovering truths that are best kept buried.

Clark shrugs his caped shoulders—the movement is so very Clark Kent-like, Bruce wants to kiss his frowning mouth. Can’t, because the table between them is too wide.

He’s done enough talking for the day.

“Come here.”

“Here?”

Bruce just looks at him. Pushes his chair back from the table, pulls his hands free, and slaps them down on top of his thighs.

“Diana is outside,” Clark reminds him—but he’s already standing up.

“So keep quiet.”

Clark all but launches himself across the table into Bruce’s lap. Kisses him deeply as Bruce winds one hand into Clark’s hair, tousling it back to Clark Kent’s natural curliness. With his other hand, Bruce hoists Clark up by the ass and onto the table. Clark’s own hands are spread wide across Bruce’s back, clinging to him like he’ll fall otherwise, like he can’t just bend gravity to his will; Bruce can barely feel them through the layers of Kevlar.

Underneath Bruce, however, Clark is the most tangible thing.

Nothing about him makes sense. It’s absurd that the man can fly. It’s even more absurd that he chooses, every day, to be with Bruce. This can’t last. Won’t last—nothing does.

Bruce presses into him—ragged, wordless breaths escaping against Clark’s shoulder—and wishes for him to stay.

**One Month Later**

Bruce makes two cups of coffee—one black, one with a generous dash of cream and a heaping spoonful of sugar—and sets them on the coffee table. Clark is sprawled on the sofa, afternoon light hazy on his face as the sun makes valiant attempts to reach him through the fog outside the lakehouse windows. He smiles when Bruce sits down next to him.

“Thanks, Bruce. Alfred’s not here?”

“No. I suggested he attend Diana’s gallery opening.”

“Oh.” Clark thinks about this, coffee mug cradled between his hands. “They’re going to talk about us.”

“Most likely,” Bruce agrees.

“Bruce, I—”

Bruce looks at Clark as he falters. He’s in that strange liminal space between disguises—not Superman, but not quite “Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter” either. He’s wearing jeans and a sky blue button-up shirt. He’d taken off his glasses when he’d come in; they lie abandoned in his coat pocket at the front door.

This is, Bruce thinks, Clark at his most attractive—simultaneously so preternaturally beautiful and so human.

“I don’t know how well this worked, last time.”

“You want to stop,” Bruce surmises, with some surprise.

“No—I don’t. I’m wondering if we should do something differently.”

“You didn’t raise any complaints before.”

“They hadn’t occurred to me yet.”

Bruce narrows his eyes. “Different how?”

“Diana’s lariat.”

Any hopefulness Bruce had felt about this conversation disintegrates. He crosses one leg over his opposite knee in a semblance of casual posture.

“No.”

“Bruce—”

“No,” Bruce says again, deadly calm. “Jesus, Clark. Is it really a conversation if you’re not in control of your own damn words?”

“Whatever it is, it would be honest,” Clark says. He doesn’t flinch, even as Bruce bristles visibly next to him. “And it was only a suggestion. I don’t want to force you to disclose anything you’re uncomfortable with. That would make us both miserable.”

“Diana’s not even here.”

Clark shifts in his seat, and Bruce fixes him with an incredulous stare.

“You borrowed her lasso?”

“It’s in my bag,” Clark admits.

“Jesus.”

“Sorry,” Clark says, like he can’t help it. “It’s fine, okay? I don’t want to make this harder. We’ll just talk it through.”

The questionnaire is already on the table. Clark picks it up.

“Are we good to start?”

“Well, sure,” Bruce says evenly. “As long as you are.”

“I’m good.” Clark gives him a look, but Bruce avoids his eye until he returns his gaze to the questionnaire. “Okay. ‘If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future, or anything else, what would you want to know?’”

Very slowly, Bruce drinks from his coffee mug and then sets it back down. He doesn’t ask Clark to speak first. He doesn’t say anything at all. Something feels on the verge of snapping, and Bruce doesn’t know how to strengthen it. He’s good with his hands, but there’s nothing tangible to fix here.

“This opens up a pretty vast realm of answers,” Clark says eventually.

“Hmm.”

Does Clark really trust him at all? Bruce had believed that he did.

“I’m actually having a bit of trouble with this one myself,” Clark is saying. “There’s an obvious question here: What would my life have been if Krypton had survived? Would I be happier? I’m not sure I’d even want to know the answer. And there are the questions that arise from… I mean, I’m not ageing as fast as you are, physically. Amazons are basically immortal. Are Kryptonians like that, too? Putting aside the fact that people do try to kill Superman… how long might it take before I _could_ die of old age? There isn’t… I mean—there’s never been another Kryptonian who’s lived on Earth. No hard evidence to rely on. Jor-El predicted that Earth’s atmosphere would physically strengthen me, but even he didn’t foresee how much. I could feasibly outlive everyone that I love. Will I? Will I have a future? Will someone be there with me?”

Bruce’s insides seize up slowly as Clark voices these thoughts aloud. He’s had the same ones. It seems likely that Clark will outlive him. Should, even.

Clark had died first, once. It should never have happened.

“Yes,” Bruce tells him simply.

It’s not clear what he’s answering. Clark, thank God, doesn’t press him.

“There’s no question I would ask,” Bruce says, because he’d agreed to participate, and he will. He’ll even tell the truth, whether or not Clark believes him. “There are too many to choose from. The questions I have… ‘If I had done this, could I have prevented that?’ The answers don’t matter now; it’s too late to fix things.”

“The answers don’t matter because they would only serve to punish you, Bruce.”

“Maybe they should.”

“You do enough of that on your own. Do you want more coffee?”

“No.”

Clark nods. “Next question, then. ‘Is there something you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?’ I guess I sort of answered this one last time.”

“Your hypothetical impossible vacation,” Bruce acknowledges.

“We could make it… less hypothetical,” Clark suggests. “Diana and Barry can hold down the fort for another weekend. Arthur might even help out. I think it’s important that we… you know—we’re so busy all the time, we never get more than a few hours to ourselves.”

Bruce hums in agreement. “A vacation would be nice,” he says slowly.

Clark grins sunnily back at him. “I’m glad we’ve decided this. Maybe after we’re done the questionnaire, we can plan something.”

“Maybe we can.”

“Don’t sound so excited.”

“I’ll be excited when we’ve worked out practicalities and it stops being a pipe dream. Next question.”

“Okay, Grumpy. ‘What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?’”

Bruce has an answer to this; his greatest accomplishment is a tragic foil to his greatest failure. He is aware that Clark knows about both, although Bruce himself has never discussed them with him. There are no family photos on the mantel. No telltale signs of anyone else in his life, since he moved to the lakehouse. But the story lives on, vast and incomplete, in the archives of Gotham’s media. Clark is an investigative reporter with a curious mind. He’d put the pieces together.

The glass case in the Cave isn’t exactly subtle, either.

It’s an important part of his life—or it had been, once. Clark deserves to hear it from him.

“Nightwing,” he says finally, and Clark looks at him with wide eyes. Bruce half-laughs when he realizes what he’s said. “Not that I’m responsible for—Nightwing is his own accomplishment.”

“Dick Grayson,” Clark says.

“He was nine years old when he watched his parents die. So was I.” Bruce leans forward; rests his elbows on his thighs and looks over clasped hands out the window. “What do you know?”

“Not an extensive amount,” Clark admits. “There’s an article about the accident. I know it wasn’t one, in the end, but it looked like one at the time. You adopted him in 2000. There’s a bit about Tony Zucco’s arrest in 2009. There was speculation that the Bat was involved. Between those years…” Clark shrugs. “Other than a few photos of him attending public events with you, there aren’t a lot of media appearances or mentions of any kind. And there’s next to nothing about his partnership with Batman—if I didn’t know you were the Bat, I definitely wouldn’t have connected those dots. They’re pretty fuzzy. But he was, wasn’t he? He was Robin.”

Bruce smiles, brief and mirthless. “Yes.”

“And—Nightwing? That’s him, too.”

“Dick moved out earlier that year, in 2009. College. Our partnership was on the rocks already, and we had a falling-out shortly after the Zucco case. He no longer wanted anything to do with… He became Nightwing. He moved to Bludhaven when he graduated to pursue police training. He’s still there.”

“He operates on both sides of the law,” Clark says, surprised.

“Yes. But he never flouted the rules the way I have, even as a vigilante.” Bruce smiles again; it feels more genuine this time. “You’d get along.”

“I’d love to meet him.”

“Don’t.”

Clark looks sad, when Bruce catches his eye in his peripheral vision. He doesn’t argue, though.

“You regret the way things ended with him,” Clark says. “But you’re still proud of him. You still—you know you did something good, with him. You gave a child who had lost everything a home, and a family. And you did that for J—”

“Don’t,” Bruce says again—no louder than the first time, but the words are unbendable as steel. “You don’t know that.”

**August, 2011**

It’s too late when he arrives. The warehouse had been blown to bits—chunks of drywall and old asbestos insulation are piled up, strewn across the property. It takes a quarter-hour of searching to find the body.

Bruce holds the boy in his arms at the edge of the wreckage. His shoulders are shaking.

Bruce’s shoulders.

The boy will never move again.

Bruce had worried for Jason when he’d taken him in two years ago. There had been a darkness growing, heavy and persistent, in the wake of his life’s tragedies. It had threatened to swallow him.

(There had been no one present, either, to remind him of the boundless light within him.)

Left to his own devices and to worse influences than Bruce, he would have ended up in the streets on the other side. He would have come up against the Bat. Bruce knows.

Thirteen had been so young.

Bruce had been nine when his illusions about a world of goodness and light had been shattered, but he’d been given chances to make a difference. He has always had the privileges that accompany old money. He has always had Alfred. He has always had the memory of parents who loved him.

The boy had had nothing when Bruce found him. The thought that a home, a family, a purpose, could help him find his way—

Fifteen is so young.

He hadn’t lived to become an adult. To go to college. To make decisions about what kind of man he’d like to be. He’d been beaten to death by a madman and then left to burn in the rubble of a place no one had cared about in years.

Bruce’s breaths are coming out loud, gasping—it’s the smoke, he realizes. There are still things burning here. Jason’s hair is filthy underneath Bruce’s gloved fingertips as he brushes it off the boy’s forehead. Dirt, and soot. Bruce needs to get him out of here. He’s been stock-still for minutes. He’s not thinking—he’s not being practical, he’s not—he’s—

He heaves Jason up into his arms and stands. It should never have come to this. This is his own fault. Jason isn’t here because of his birth father, or the clown, or anyone else. Bruce can’t blame anyone but himself.

He’d tried to give the boy a life, and Jason had died.

Fifteen.

The depth of Bruce’s failure holds him motionless, even as the foundation around him continues to smolder.

**Present Day**

“I failed him,” Bruce says. “And Dick. But Dick outgrew me. He’s a good man, and he’s made his own life. He’s everything I ever hoped for in a—he’s more than I ever hoped for.”

Bruce makes to drink more of his coffee, but it’s gone. It occurs to him that he’d finished it some time ago. Clark had offered to bring him more. He barely remembers, now. Memories of past regrets are clouding his perception of the present.

Clark rests a hand on his knee, and Bruce’s mind sharpens to the feeling. The realness of him.

There’s nothing Bruce wants to hear right now, and Clark says nothing—just allows his warmth to seep into Bruce like rays of sunshine, making his presence known in that inimitable way of his. Bruce closes his eyes and allows himself to relax into his touch, just for a moment.

“I think that my biggest accomplishment is… my life,” Clark says thoughtfully. He gives Bruce’s knee a squeeze, and then lets go. “Is that corny? After I realized the extent of—I mean, learning I was an alien kinda threw a wrench in my picturesque get-married-settle-down-have-two-kids vision of how futures play out. For me, anyway.

“My life isn’t what I dreamed it would be, but not because things didn’t work out. I simply couldn’t have predicted the events that would take place. I never would have guessed I’d end up where I am, but—I’m glad to be here. I have a job that I enjoy. I have friends. I still have Mom. And I have a partner that I love.” He looks at Bruce, and his eyes are soft. “I’m happy.”

Bruce shuffles across the sofa till he’s hip-to-thigh with Clark.

“What?” Clark says.

Clark deserves to be happy.

“You deserve it,” Bruce says aloud, because he wants Clark to know. Clark’s mouth turns up into a smile, and Bruce leans in to kiss him.

Clark lets his hands travel up Bruce’s arms, fingers pressing into his biceps, a low and contented hum vibrating in his throat. He pulls away after a minute, still smiling. “Mm. This is nice. You—being sweet, instead of making fun of me for being sappy.”

“You are sappy,” Bruce says seriously.

Clark kisses him again, brief, and leans back into the couch.

Bruce wants to follow. Clark might even let him.

“Next question?” Clark says.

The print-out lies innocuously on the coffee table next to their empty mugs. Bruce eyes it warily.

“This one applies more directly to us,” Clark adds approvingly. “Fifteen is: ‘What do you value most in a friendship?’”

“Trust,” Bruce says.

“Which kind?” Clark asks. “The kind where you have trust in someone else—or where someone else has trust in you?”

The first is more important. Bruce can’t blame anyone for questioning his own motives.

“Both,” he tells Clark.

“Agreed. And—I do trust you. I hope you know you can always rely on me, too.”

Clark has never let him down in the time Bruce has known him. Dangerous as it is, he’s begun to trust in that. In Clark’s infallibility.

“I value honesty,” Clark says, and Diana’s lasso comes to Bruce’s thoughts unbidden. As if Clark had just read Bruce’s mind, he adds: “But not in a… I don’t think that someone needs to tell me absolutely everything about themselves and hold back no secrets. Not that kind of honesty. What I mean is… I need to be around people who are unafraid to share their thoughts and opinions. Who are open about disagreeing if they see something they think is wrong. Who—even if… _especially_ if it’s me who’s in the wrong—can express that disagreement. That kind of honesty.”

“I disagree with your shirt,” Bruce tells him seriously.

“You like this shirt,” Clark says, although Bruce’s comment surprises a grin out of him. “You said that it brings out my eyes.”

“I disagree with it being there.” Bruce thinks for a second. “And I never said that.”

“Sure, Mr. I’m-never-sappy.” And then: “I’d rather skip the next one, if that’s alright with you.”

“What is it?”

“‘Most terrible memory’,” Clark says. “Once you have more than one terrible memory… it seems unhelpful to dwell on which was the worst.”

What’s worse: losing a parent as a child, or losing a child as a parent?

Clark might be right.

“Agreed.” 

“Next one is, ‘If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?’”

“Have you?”

“Have I changed anything about my way of living since I died? Mm.” Clark rests his cheek against the back of the leather sofa as he thinks, face toward Bruce. “I would say that I try harder to find new solutions to problems. A lot of bad things that happened… I could have stopped them, but I didn’t, because I didn’t know how. And now I get to try again. I get to learn. That’s how I’m changing. I’m grateful to have another shot.”

Clark shouldn’t have died to get his second chance. Needn’t have. That had been Bruce’s doing, too. That Clark feels _gratitude_ for—Jesus, Bruce shouldn’t get to have that, even tangentially.

“I wouldn’t change anything,” Bruce says, because he never expected to get this far. He has always lived with ‘Every Day Could Be Your Last’ strung over his head like a banner. He looks at the paper on the coffee table. “The next one is redundant.”

“‘What does friendship mean to you?’ Yeah, we sort of answered that. It’s not redundant, though. I think it’s a good thing to reiterate. But also, this could be a simpler answer. For me, friendship is about… spending time with someone whose company you enjoy.”

“And trust,” Bruce says.

“And trust.” Clark looks at his empty mug. “Do you want tea?”

“Are you offering to make it?”

“I am.”

“Then I’ll have tea.”

Clark returns to the couch five minutes later with two cups of English Breakfast and his shoulder bag.

Bruce tenses immediately when Clark sets it down on the floor in front of the couch.

“I’m not asking you to use it,” Clark says, when he sees Bruce’s face. “I wouldn’t. But… _I_ want to.”

“_Why_.”

“Because I want you to know that what I’m saying is true—and because sometimes the truth is hard to say out loud, or even to see.”

“Is a truthful ‘I don’t know’ not a viable answer?”

“Sure. But I _want_ to know. I want to know my own answers.”

“Well, then I don’t see why you need me here.”

Clark sighs heavily and scrubs a hand through his hair. “Don’t be obtuse.”

Bruce’s eyes narrow, but he doesn’t answer. Long gone are the days when he’d had a hankering for a fight with this man. He’ll grumble about Clark waking him up at an ungodly hour of the morning, but little bumps like that are—are normal. A honest-to-God fight, however, might be the punch that shatters the glass that has already begun to crack.

(It will break, Bruce knows, but he doesn’t need to expedite the process.)

Bruce watches as Clark removes the lariat from his bag. He winds it around his fingers experimentally, and the threaded rope glows in his hands. 

“It’s warm,” Clark says, surprised. “Have you held it before?”

“Yes. Witness interrogation. You haven’t?”

“I haven’t.”

“It’s in your bag, Clark. How did it get there?”

“I was wearing gloves earlier.”

“Oh? You didn’t want to say anything you might regret… to Diana?”

“Please don’t make this harder,” Clark says softly. “I don’t expect you to cross any lines you’ve set for yourself. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. I just want to talk with you.”

Clark’s hand finds Bruce’s shoulder; his fingers press lightly into Bruce’s skin through his dress shirt, his touch warm like sunshine on Bruce’s back. Bruce lets out a breath through his nose.

“What do you say, Bruce? Can we do the next one?”

Clark has the lasso. Clark just wants to talk. And Bruce… well, Bruce isn’t good at sharing. He’s aware that responding to a heartfelt comment with silence or flippancy isn’t kind. And while kindness has never been a trait Bruce has particularly aspired to, anxiety still gnaws at his insides. He isn’t kind, and Clark is, and it seems impossible that those two truths can co-exist for very long.

He nods.

“Okay,” Clark echoes, relief in his voice. “Okay. Great. We’re almost at the end, anyway. We’ll finish soon enough, and then we can talk about something else.”

It’s unlikely Bruce will want talk at all, when this is finished. He nods again.

“Nineteen: ‘What roles do love and affection play in your life?’”

“You first,” Bruce tells him, “since you have this rope to help you out.”

“Love and affection are the greatest things I’ve known,” Clark says steadily. “Without the love my parents showed me, I don’t know what I would have become. Their love grounded me in my humanity, even when I felt most different. Most alien. They showed me the importance of affection and empathy.”

“You can have empathy without love and affection.”

“You’ve known love, Bruce,” Clark says. “You are not an example of goodness which has grown in an absence of love. Your parents are gone. My birth parents are, too. They loved me, as your parents loved you. Alfred has stayed with you all this time, and you know it’s not simply out of loyalty to your family. You’re the only one of your family left. He loves _you_. That’s why he’s still here. And I—”

Clark looks down at the rope between his fingers. The golden glow of it illuminates his skin, tints it bright red where the light shines through blood vessels.

“I love you. You wanted me dead, and I love you. You—it shouldn’t even be possible, how far we’ve come. Shouldn’t have been possible that we _went_ as far as we did. Bruce. Look at us. We never gave each other a chance. We never stopped to consider how much we could relate to each other. How much we have in common. How useful it would be to join forces in our common goals. There was a foundation there for a partnership all along. For friendship. For love. We didn’t even look for it.

“And now that we’ve found it, I know—I _know_ that it is always of the utmost importance to give people that chance. To look for what you aren’t seeing. You have a good heart, Bruce. You’re a good man. And you—we… what we have, what we’ve built… means the world to me.”

Very gently, Clark adds: “I think you’ve known this sort of love before, too. No matter what happened, it had to have strengthened you. It _had_ to have. I can’t believe that love is ever a weakness.”

It is, Bruce thinks. It _is_ a weakness.

**September, 1996**

Bruce shuts the ring box and kneels on the ground; presses it down into the dirt like he’s going to bury it there. Maybe he should. The ring hadn’t been precious for any reason other than that he’d bought it for her. It had been expensive, but not a family heirloom. Not sentimental. And Bruce has no family left about which to _be_ sentimental, regardless. There’s only him and Andrea, now.

No.

There’s only him and Alfred, as it has been since Bruce had lost his parents.

Happiness. Bruce had known it when he’d been with her. He would have married her. Given up his promise for her. Stayed in at night like a man should do and had tea and the affection of someone who understood him, Jesus, she’d always been just what Bruce had wanted.

The memory of their first meeting resurfaces: a cemetery visit in the middle of the day; Andrea’s lively one-sided conversation with her mother. She’d been so full of life, of optimism, of hope for a bright future, that Bruce had believed a future to be possible.

The certainty that she isn’t coming back presses down on him; he hunches over further till his back is bent with the weight of it, his hands splayed in the sand amongst the tiny things that have begun to grow there.

The bats that erupt from the crevices feel like an omen.

What Bruce had wanted, he can never have. Happiness isn’t something meant for a man like him. He’d made a vow to his parents. That’s all that matters. That’s all he needs. It gives him a purpose.

Happiness has no place in his mission. He’d nearly given it up because—

Because they cannot co-exist. Happiness, and the mission. He’d chosen happiness, and now Andrea is gone. He’d been a fool. The mission is all that’s left.

The sound of wings deafens him for a second. He’s not in danger, but it fills him with a quiet sort of discomfort, of—

Fear. Despite everything he is.

This is all that he needs.

**Present Day**

“You’re wrong,” Clark says.

“What do you know?” Bruce says, a touch too forcefully. He regrets it immediately. He knows that Clark had bought a ring for Lois. That it had been returned to him, months later, with a heartfelt apology.

“I know that you’re stronger because you’ve known love, and because you feel it, too. I know _you_. It’s not revenge that drives you. It’s not hate, or bitterness, or anything else you might pretend.”

Bruce can’t argue. Won’t. He closes his eyes.

“Don’t. Don’t try to—Bruce, please, don’t shut me out. You’re afraid of something, and I can’t figure out what it is. Do you think I’m going to leave you?”

Bruce keeps his eyes shut. Breathes in, out, slowly through his nose. “No.”

“I don’t believe you,” Clark says, and for the first time since they’ve started this exercise, a hint of anger burns at the ends of his words. Smoke curls in the air between them; Bruce feels the danger here. If he says the wrong thing—

“I don’t,” Bruce says carefully, “necessarily think that it’s your choice.”

Clark gapes at him. “You don’t think it's my choice to—what? Be with you?”

“To leave.”

“I haven’t _gone_ anywhere.”

“You will. You always… No one stays. No one.”

“What have I ever done to make you think that? You—we’ve both lost people. I know what loss feels like, Bruce. And I know that sometimes relationships end. Sometimes people leave. Sometimes they die, and you can’t bring them back. But for God’s sake—I’m not planning on dying again anytime soon, and I’m certainly not planning to run off to… I don’t know. Tahiti? Retirement in a secluded beach house where you’d never find me again?”

Sometimes people have no control over whether they stay or go.

“I’m not a good man, Clark. I’m not what you want. You may be convinced sometimes that you…” He still can’t say it. “But it isn’t true. Is it, Clark. You’re not happy. I can’t make you happy.”

“Bruce, that’s—” Clark hisses as the rope glows brighter in his hand. Even Superman can feel that sting. He can’t lie; can’t pretend it’s untrue. For once, he fights the impulse to speak. Now that Bruce has him here like this, however, he needs to know.

“Tell me,” Bruce says. “Are you happy—with me?”

Clark looks at him with wide eyes. The lasso reflects in them, gold specks like comet trails in that unearthly blue. “No.” The word comes out in a gasp, like Clark had tried to swallow it but couldn’t keep it in. “No. I’m not. No.”

The lasso falls from his fingers to the lakehouse floor.

Bruce watches Clark as he stands, frozen, next to the couch. He feels… he feels… 

He feels _right_. Of course he’d been right. It fills him with a terrible sense of calm.

“Have you ever trusted me, Clark? Have you believed this entire time that _I’ve_ been lying to _you_?”

At his sides, Clark’s hands make fists.

“When were you going to tell me?” Bruce continues, in lieu of unbearable silence. “How long were you going to pretend? What… have you _gained_ from this?”

Clark had been looking at the floor, but his eyes snap up now to fix Bruce with a horrible expression.

“Pretending,” Clark says. He draws the word out slowly between his teeth like he’s never known something so distasteful; like he wants to spit it in Bruce’s face. “Is that what you think I’m doing? Is that what you think this is?”

Clark had as good as said it. He’s not happy. He’d pretended to be. He _isn’t_. Bruce had thought that he could—

But he was wrong. Jesus Christ, he’d been a goddamn fool to think that he could ever do enough—_be_ enough—to make up for what he’d done. To give Clark the life he deserves. Bruce has never been the right person for that. Everything Bruce touches dies, or realizes that elsewhere—anywhere, so long as he isn’t around to poison it—is a better place to be. He should have learned his lesson by now. He should never have allowed this to become personal. He should never have become invested in—

“Fuck,” Clark swears, when Bruce’s silence stretches on. “I can’t—I knew. I _know_. Jesus, Bruce, I know you’ve lost people, and I know you hold onto that like some kind of…” He shakes his head, runs a hand through his hair. He isn’t still anymore. He paces the coffee table; his hands never stop moving. “I know that because of what you’ve gone through, with other people—you have a hard time believing in… permanence. So I tried to…”

Bruce watches from the corner of the couch as Clark pushes up his sleeves, ruffles his hair until it’s a mess of haphazard curls, sticks his hands in his pockets, removes them again. He feels like he’s observing through a fog—like he’s stepped into some bizarre Surrealist painting with indecipherable meaning. Clark’s words reach him, but only just. It’s hard to process them. They feel secondary, somehow, to Clark’s agitation.

The way he’s moving is nothing like Superman. Superman is an immovable force. A steel barrier, calm and steady and implacable.

Clark waves his hands through the air and nearly knocks a lamp off the side table it’s sitting on. He pauses for a split-second, startled, and then rights the lamp before he continues to pace. Bruce’s chest feels tight, and he realizes that he’s been breathing too shallowly. He watches Clark direct an apologetic glance at the side table before he turns back to the windows, offending hand stuffed back into his pocket. The muscles in his arms are visibly tense under his rolled-up shirtsleeves. Bruce is staring. He forces himself to take a deeper breath—he’s not getting enough oxygen, he’s getting light-headed, he hasn’t heard anything that Clark has just—

“—doesn’t even matter, does it?” Clark asks, turning back to face him. The anger from earlier is gone. All that’s left in Clark’s eyes is a profound exhaustion, paired with a disappointed frown.

Bruce looks at Clark. He’d moved across the room—too far away—and the sun had set behind him while he’d been talking; the last vestiges of orange sunset limn Clark’s hair and shirtsleeves in dying light. He’s the warmest thing in this room, but Bruce can’t feel that warmth at all from where he is.

He thinks that if he asks Clark to come back to him—to touch him, to stay with him—he would.

“Are you going to say anything?”

Bruce knows what he wants. He can’t ask for it. 

(He’s been selfish long enough. Clark has never been his to keep.)

“Go,” Bruce says. He barely hears his own voice when he speaks; can’t tell if it sounded assured, or painfully hoarse. Perhaps he hadn’t managed to speak at all. The thought makes him frown. Did Clark hear him? He isn’t moving. 

Clark looks back at Bruce for a long moment with that tired, tired frown. And then, slowly, he bends to pick up his shoulder bag and Diana’s lasso.

The sun has completely set now. The only light sources in the room are the lamp Clark rescued and the lariat shining in the palm of his hand.

A multitude of emotions flicker across Clark’s face, softly underlit by that golden glow. It’s clear he wants to voice them—that even if he doesn’t know precisely how, the lariat will whittle his displeasure into a spear as deadly as the one Bruce had once turned on him. Bruce won’t flinch away from those words. He deserves to feel their impact.

Except Clark doesn’t speak, this time. He clenches his jaw and stuffs the lariat into his bag.

Clark doesn’t leave in a hurry. He doesn’t pick up his pace under Bruce’s relentless stare. He walks carefully and steadily to the entranceway. He unfolds his glasses and puts them back on. He lifts his coat from the hook and pulls it over his shoulders.

After what feels like an eternity, Bruce hears the front door close.

**Two Weeks Later**

“Bruce,” Diana says, “we need to talk.”

“Do we?”

Bruce pulls his gauntlets off and leaves them on the worktable next to his cowl. He focuses his eyes on a monitor, but his attention strays; he isn’t digesting the information displayed there, hyper-aware of Diana’s gaze on his back as he turns away from her too-intent frown.

She doesn’t say anything—just watches with the patience of a god as he pretends to look occupied.

“‘Talking’ is what started this,” Bruce says stiffly, after several minutes have elapsed. He grips the back of his desk chair, but doesn’t sit in it.

“You know that isn’t true.”

“I did what you said. I tried. We talked. It made things worse.”

“What did you say to him?”

Bruce laughs, a mirthless bark that echoes in the depths of the cave. “What did _I_ say?”

“Did you ask that he leave?”

“Yes.” Bruce does turn, then. “Did you know?”

Diana looks back at him unflinchingly. Damn her, she’s going to make him say it out loud.

“Did you know he was unhappy?”

“Bruce,” Diana says gently. She steps forward into his space and lays a hand on his forearm. He hadn’t invited her here today, but then again, she’d never waited for an invitation. “Were you not unhappy, too?”

Bruce’s own happiness has never been a priority.

“Do not assume I am unfamiliar with your feelings toward him. I know that you care deeply for him, and for his well-being. But to be untruthful to yourself would be an injustice. It is possible to feel both love and unhappiness at once. The existence of one does not make the other nonexistent, nor unimportant.”

“What,” Bruce says slowly, “did he say to you?”

Diana shakes her head. “I will not speak for him. It is not my place to tell another person’s truths.”

“He lied to me, Diana.”

“Did he?” Diana says, still with infinite calmness. Her fingers circle his wrist, and then tug his hand from the back of the chair till it’s grasped firmly in her own. “Did you give him time to explain his words to you?”

Bruce resists the urge to twist out of her hold. “It doesn’t matter. It’s better for him to—it’s better this way.”

“You’ve given up?” Diana asks, eyes narrowing under her pointed brows.

“No. I’ve let go of something I was never meant to have.”

“And what would that ‘something’ be, Bruce? Do you refer to Clark, or to the opportunity for happiness?”

Bruce’s hand curls with tension beneath Diana’s fingers.

“You are afraid, Bruce Wayne. I can understand. But do not think for a minute that what you are fighting now is anything you have fought before. You see the losses you have known as a pattern—summer dying each year at the birth of autumn. They are not so easily predictable. Each one is its own tragedy; each is a separate event. An earthquake occurs at Earth’s faultlines, but it is a fool’s errand to assume with certainty it will happen. It is also a mistake to assume the damage is always irreparable.”

“This has happened before, Diana.”

“Clark Kent is not Andrea Beaumont,” Diana says, firm and unyielding. “He is not Harvey Dent. He is not anyone you have known previously. Do not underestimate him. As long as you care for him, you owe it to yourself to give him the chance to explain his heart to you. When he approached me, it was merely to express that he wished to speak with you. If you love Clark, then you owe it to him to listen.”

Bruce still doesn’t move.

“Bruce,” Diana says, and reaches to take his other hand, too. “Do you wish to let him go?”

**June, 2012**

“I’ve had enough.”

The domino mask falls to the ground near Bruce’s feet; the cape—although thrown roughly—is caught by the wind on its way down, and drapes itself across Bruce’s knees like a blanket. His fingers close around it, as if tactile sense will confirm what his ears and eyes cannot.

Dick isn’t looking at him.

“I’m done.”

Bruce doesn’t speak. There is nothing he can say to change Dick’s mind now. After all, ‘manipulative’ and ‘heartless’ aren’t unfair assessments. The world gets harsher day by day, and Bruce adapts alongside it.

(Dick never had. He’d remained an optimist despite every goddamn thing they’ve seen.)

Bruce watches as his partner—his friend—disappears over the side of the roof in a flurry of red and green. In the dimness of Gotham’s dusk, it occurs to him that he’d fallen because Dick had pushed him: that Dick had taken him by surprise, that he had developed that level of sheer physical force. Lying in the gravel of this rooftop—the stones digging into the hand he has braced at his side, even through his leather gauntlet—Bruce’s devastation is tempered by pride for him.

Bruce has always been proud of Dick: he has shattered Bruce’s hopes and expectations. The man is unstoppable. Bruce wants nothing more than to watch him succeed.

The real surprise is that Bruce is surprised at all. It had been difficult lately, his partnership with Dick a fragile thing, and Bruce had done nothing to patch up the holes stretching out between them. Might have let them grow, even. It had been to simplify things in the long run.

Nothing feels simple now.

The certainty of no return is familiar. Dick isn’t going to come back.

_Twelve years._

Bruce had had more time with Dick than he ever had with his parents. Dick had been a boy when Bruce had witnessed the greatest tragedy of his life—a kindred spirit, one that Bruce had thought he could help—

Not as Batman, but as Bruce Wayne.

It’s Batman that Dick had fought earlier, but it’s Bruce who feels the blows now. It’s Bruce who had let him down. It’s Bruce who hadn’t made efforts to keep them on the same track.

(It’s Bruce who hadn’t attended Dick’s college graduation ceremony.) 

Bruce doesn’t follow him into the night; doesn’t call after him. Bruce sits on the gravel rooftop and does nothing at all as Dick Grayson backflips out of his life with more elegance and grace than Bruce has ever had.

It’s for the best.

**Present Day**

“No,” Bruce says. “No, of course I don’t wish to—” He breathes out through his nose, suddenly exhausted, and pulls his hands out of Diana’s grasp. He doesn’t move away—just crosses his arms in front of his body as if they’d do any good shielding him from her.

“You have changed, Bruce. You do not have to make the same decisions you made in the past.”

“This isn’t about the past. This is about the future. _His_ future. He deserves…”

“He deserves somebody who loves him. Just as Dick Grayson did. Just as he still does. People don’t need to be gone forever when they leave, Bruce. Clark isn’t far. You can still speak with him.”

“Dick Grayson,” Bruce repeats. “Dick Grayson didn't want me to follow him, Diana. He didn't want me to show up at his doorstep and read off explanations or excuses for—Jesus, even if he were my kid, it’s not like—” Bruce shuts his eyes and takes another deep, steadying breath. “He had every right to make his own decisions about his life. Where he wanted to live. Whom he wanted to be part of it. It would have been disrespectful to—”

“To be his friend?”

“He didn't want a friend,” Bruce grits out.

“Did he tell you this?”

“He told me that I was a manipulative asshole who would never change.”

“If you speak with him now, you may find that he is willing to make amends. If you never speak with him, you will never find out.”

“I can’t.”

“Bruce—”

“Goddammit, Diana. _Why_ are you here?”

Diana fixes dark eyes on him, and Bruce is pinned by her gaze. She and Clark share that ability—the way they can trap him with sincerity, even when sincerity is the last thing he wants.

“I am here because I believe that you are making a grave error. I am here because you are my friend, as Clark is my friend. I am here to tell you that your fear is clouding your judgement. I am here because I am convinced that if you take this leap of faith, you will find that true happiness is within your reach.”

“I can operate effectively as I am,” Bruce says, because it’s easier than acknowledging what she’s saying.

“What do you think might happen if you were to follow after Clark? Are you afraid that he will be angry—or that he will forgive you?”

“He shouldn’t,” Bruce mutters. “Jesus. He shouldn’t.”

“Speak with him,” Diana repeats. “Tell him what it is you want from him. Wait until he has responded in kind. Only then will you know if you are right to let him go.”

**Six Hours Later**

His arrival can’t be a surprise. Impossible, with Clark’s overdeveloped senses, to approach his home in Kansas unexpectedly.

All the same, no one’s outside when Bruce pulls up the driveway. It’s after dinnertime—a bit late to call on anyone without warning, but he’ll be home, and Bruce—

Bruce never would have made it here if he’d had to phone in advance.

He walks up to the farmhouse door. There’s an old knocker shaped like a rooster; Bruce pulls it three times.

It’s at least half a minute before anyone answers, which is just enough time for Bruce to decide that either he had taken Clark by surprise after all, or else that he had been correct to assume—despite Diana’s protestations—that Clark wouldn’t want to see him.

The door opens, and yellow light spills from the farmhouse into the night, over Bruce and his dark blue suit. The smell of home cooking follows in its wake.

“Bruce,” Martha says, more warmly than Bruce thinks he deserves. “It’s good to see you.”

“It’s good to see you, too, Martha. Is Clark—?”

Martha smiles. “I told him you would come. Oh, come in. Clark is upstairs, reading. Or pretending to, anyway. He must have heard you coming.”

Oh.

“I don’t want to trouble him. I can—”

“Come in,” Martha says again, more firmly this time. She pulls the door open wider and all but herds Bruce through the entryway, tugging his overcoat off as she does. She hangs it on the coat rack, and then moves to the kitchen. Bruce follows.

“I’m sorry to stop by so late,” Bruce tells her.

“Well, you didn't wake us up,” Martha says, as she busies herself with the kettle. “So it’s a perfectly good hour, as far as time of day is concerned.” She fishes out a tin of tea bags and drops two in the china teapot.

“It’s been two weeks.”

“It has,” Martha agrees mildly.

“How is he?”

“Listening into this conversation from his bedroom, as you damn well know.” Her words are fond rather than harsh, her love for her son overpowering any misgivings she may have about Bruce. “I did tell him that you wouldn’t give him up as easily as that.”

“May I, uh—or, do you want to let him know that I’m—”

“You can go up,” Martha says. “Tell him I sent you.” She fills two mugs with tea, stirs sugar into one, and then presses both into Bruce’s hands.

Bruce cannot ever hope to express how grateful he is that Martha continues to allow him into their home—into their lives. “Thank you,” he says.

“It’s peppermint,” she answers.

—

Bruce hasn’t got hands to knock on Clark’s door when he reaches the landing upstairs. Momentarily unsure how to proceed—

(—he can’t just push the door open, not today, and usual greetings feel equally taboo—)

—he stands at the top of the stairs and freezes there, arms slightly raised, forward motion halted by fear that he is doing something entirely idiotic.

“Are you going to stand there all night?”

Clark’s voice, from the other side of the door.

Bruce inhales, and then pushes it open with an elbow.

Clark is reclined on his childhood bed, nose in a book, his little solar system mobile swaying gently above his head. The window is closed, and no other breeze moves through the room—perhaps the mobile is never still when Clark is here. Perhaps it moves inexorably in his strange gravitational wake, so long as he’s alive to pull it.

There’s a side table next to the bed; Bruce gives it a cursory once-over, concludes that coasters are nowhere to be seen, and sets both mugs down on the wood surface.

Clark glances up at him and then back at his book.

“You have never broken my trust,” Bruce says carefully. “You are determined in the face of challenges that would make most men cower. You have immense self-control. You are kind to every person who crosses your path. And you are genuine and true, almost to a fault.”

Bruce watches as Clark’s gaze freezes in place; he’s seeing the words on those pages about as clearly as Bruce had seen the shipping data on the Cave’s computer monitors earlier, with Diana.

“Question twenty,” Bruce clarifies. “‘Share a total of five things you consider to be a positive characteristic of your partner.’”

Clark sets the book next to the mugs. “You’ll forgive me if I need a minute before I address that.”

Bruce inclines his head.

“What do you want, Bruce?” Clark asks. “No lies. No obfuscations.”

And isn’t that the big question? Bruce wants a lot of things. Acknowledging them, admitting them aloud—that’s always been the challenge. Admitting them out loud feels too much like making promises about things he can never guarantee.

“I want,” Bruce says hesitantly, “to talk about the future.”

“Great.” Clark crosses his arms. “Anyone’s in particular?”

“Ours.”

“I’m listening.”

“You’re different.”

“Gee, thanks,” Clark says flatly. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“You’re different from everyone I’ve known,” Bruce says, continuing on undeterred. “I can’t fly. I can’t shoot laser beams from my eyes. The way I operate has always relied on logic. On recognizing patterns in order to predict future outcomes. I apply rational thought to all areas of my life, including the people in it.” Bruce frowns. “Data is more impersonal. More useful to dwell on. But sometimes I get it wrong.”

Clark looks up at him from the bed. Above them both, the mobile continues to spin.

“I was wrong,” Bruce says, “to quantify you as someone who might fit into any pre-existing pattern I had observed. If any pattern exists, it lies in my recurring miscalculations of your character. You’re an honest man. I don’t believe that you have willingly lied to me. I would expect nothing less of most anyone else, but not you. You defy every expectation I have ever had.

“Not too long ago, it was statistically impossible that you could exist. You’re still staggeringly unlikely, but you’re—” Bruce lifts a hand as if to gesture with it, lets it come to a halt in midair, and then drops it back to his side, pushing it into his pants pocket. “You’re Superman. You’re the goddamn Superman, and that’s only half of what makes you unbelievable. That a man could fall to Earth, that he could become a symbol of hope for humanity—that he could be magnanimous toward its citizens, even—”

Bruce takes another moment to compose himself.

Very still, Clark waits without prompting him. His eyes aren’t angry anymore. It fills Bruce with hope and trepidation.

“My methods don’t always agree with yours,” Bruce says. “We’ve worked together despite our differences for the past three years. Our partnership works because we have common goals. We both want safer streets. We both want to protect innocent lives. We strive for justice, whether or not justice is achievable.

“I’ve had partners before in my mission. Good people. Courageous people. They looked to me for guidance, and their safety was my responsibility—morally and legally. I failed them. But you’re Superman.” For a single, delusional moment, Bruce nearly laughs. “God, you’re Superman. You don’t want to be him all of the time. You don’t need to be. But that doesn’t change the fact of what you are. Of _who_ you are.

“There is no one better suited to take up this fight than you are. And there’s no reason for you to—you’re not obliged to it. You _could_ stop—except that on some level, you can’t. Just like I can’t.” Bruce shakes his head. “You understand what this fight is. You make it yours, every day.”

At some point while he was talking, Bruce crossed the room to stand beside the window. It’s a clear night: the stars twinkle more visibly here than they ever do through Gotham’s industrial smog. Clark can see the stars from anywhere, but Bruce knows that he still prefers the view from Smallville. Bruce leans into the white-painted window frame. 

“When we first met, I was working alone. Alfred can attest to the depth of my derailment. My methods failed me. You know that. You felt it. Finding myself a part of a team, after operating in isolation—I’ve been reminded of the benefits of collaboration. One perspective on its own has nothing to steer it back if it skews wildly from its original goal. I have always been glad for Alfred’s assistance. God knows why he still puts up with me. But sometimes I need someone who can stop me.”

The points all add up in Bruce’s head. A team is critical. Whomever he partners with must share enough common goals to make collaboration effective. The ideal partner is someone who is Bruce’s equal—someone for whom he has no responsibility, and who can decide for themselves what risks are reasonable to take. The ideal partner in his personal life is not separate from his partner-in-mission. Bruce doesn’t think he can explain this without getting sentimental, or without pedantically checking off speaking points on his fingers. What he says instead is: “I want a partner with whom I can share my mission… and my life. There is no one else I would prefer to have at my side. I—if you still think of me as you did…” 

“I do,” Clark says. He swings his legs over the side of the bed to face Bruce completely. “Bruce—I meant it when I told you that nothing you said could change that. What are you asking?”

“We could plan that vacation,” Bruce says tentatively. “Take some time to—be alone.”

Clark folds his hands together over his knees. “I need to tell you something first.”

Bruce frowns.

“About our last vacation.”

“Okay,” Bruce says slowly. “What is it?”

“It was kind of terrible.”

Bruce angles his body away from the window to face Clark in turn. He can feel confusion etching lines into his forehead.

“We did _way_ too much,” Clark elaborates. “We don’t need to see everything. All I wanted was to spend time with you. Just you. And by the end of the weekend, you were so tired, you couldn’t possibly have been enjoying yourself—but you spent so much time planning it, I didn't want to… I mean, you did that for me. Bruce—you don’t need to try that hard. I don’t need anything complicated from you. All I’ve ever wanted is your support, and your company.”

Bruce looks back at him blankly.

“We could stay home and do nothing, and that would be enough for me,” Clark says. For the first time this evening, he smiles tiredly. “Bruce—is it so hard to believe that I like being around you?”

When Bruce doesn’t answer, Clark shakes his head. Stands. Crosses the last three feet between them and takes Bruce’s hands in his own. “To answer question twenty for myself… You’re generous with everything you have—your money, your time, your efforts. You have the patience of a stone statue. You have this solid presence that grounds me, even when our lives are insane. You always keep your word. And—even when it’s misguided—you have a good heart.”

“Is that a ‘yes’ to our vacation?”

“Not yet,” Clark says. “You’re being flippant. I know you. But after everything you’ve said, I want to be honest, too.”

“About—”

“No,” Clark says. And then: “And yes. Can we sit down?”

Bruce lets Clark guide him toward the bed, and sits down at his side. Clark clasps Bruce’s hands between his—lets them rest over his thighs, and doesn’t let go. 

“I was unhappy. Have been for a while. But never entirely. Not always. And not because of you. What I mean is… we’ve been having problems, but some of them were because of me, too. I recognized that, but it still wasn’t easy to talk about it. I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the past two weeks, and I understand how you might think that I was being dishonest with you.”

“I don’t think that.”

“You did,” Clark says gently. “At least for a moment, you did.”

Bruce grimaces, but says nothing.

“I brought Diana’s lasso to the lakehouse,” Clark says.

“Well. You wanted to know the truth.”

“No.” Clark shakes his head. “I already knew the truth. And Diana knew, and I’m pretty sure you knew, too, and no one was saying anything, and the lasso felt like a way of—I mean, it’s designed to compel a person to speak the truth. That’s all I wanted to do. Meanwhile I’d been telling you that trust and honesty are things I value in a relationship—God, of course when I brought out the lasso, you’d think that I believed we’d been lying to one other. That you’d been lying to me. What else could you assume? Bruce, I…”

“It’s fine,” Bruce says. “Clark. Don’t worry about it.”

“It’s not fine,” Clark says emphatically. He squeezes Bruce’s hands a touch too tightly, but Bruce doesn’t pull them away. “This is it, Bruce. Don’t you see? If something isn’t fine, we need to communicate that.” In a softer voice, he asks: “Are you still worried I’m going to leave you?”

Bruce might keep that worry forever. But at the same time, perhaps he can also nurture a hope for a future.

Clark twists so that he’s facing Bruce again. “All you have to do is ask,” he says. “I’ll say yes.”

**January, 2017**

Bruce kneels on the frozen earth, leather-gloved hands braced in front of him. He’d had business in Kansas—real business; Bruce Wayne business—but he has no business here. He shouldn’t have returned, but the pull had been too strong, and perhaps Bruce isn’t as resistant as he used to be.

(Perhaps he’d been weak all along.)

He hears someone approach before he lifts his head—knows who it is, even, and there’s no sense in running and hiding, because—

Because she knows who he is, too.

“You came back,” she says, in a tone that betrays very little. Her eyes are considering—not cold, but there’s no warmth there, either. She’s expecting him to answer. Bruce will never have an answer that will come close to adequate.

“I came back,” he tries—agreement, her own words, an effort at diplomacy.

She’s not buying it.

“You paid for his funeral.”

Bruce doesn’t answer.

“I tried to get in touch with you when I realized. Was never able to, though. You’ve always been conveniently busy.” Martha tilts her head, looks down at him where he kneels. “And now you’re here.”

Bruce winces. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be.”

“Why did you come?”

“I don’t know.”

“Bullshit,” Martha says, and Bruce blinks in surprise. “You have a reason for everything you do.”

There are reasons, but Bruce himself is still deciphering them. A tangle of guilt, of regret, of wistfulness, of other unnamed things.

“I came to tell him that I—” Bruce clenches his fists and closes his mouth. The flowers he brought lie peacefully against the headstone, the frost-tinged grass. “I wish that he could be here.”

The words are too simple and sentimental, but they’re honest. Martha kneels down next to him and lays a bare hand against the frozen ground, curling her fingers like she can feel her son from here.

They’re both quiet for a minute, Bruce unwilling to break what feels a peaceful silence between them.

Eventually, Martha speaks again. “I talk to him, too. Sometimes I feel like I can hear him answer.”

Bruce talks to his parents, sometimes. Used to, more often than he does now. He hasn’t ever gotten an answer.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce says again. “Clark was a good man. I would have realized sooner, if I’d—”

He freezes. There’s a hand on his knee. “Don’t tell me,” Martha says. “Tell him.”

Bruce almost laughs. “You think he’d listen?”

“He always listens when it matters,” Martha says sagely.

“I can’t.”

Martha just waits.

Bruce takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. It crystallizes in the winter air.

“You were a good man,” he tells Clark, “and I would have realized it sooner if I’d been paying attention. If I’d looked in the right places. It was right in front of me all along. My concerns weren’t…” He closes his eyes. It’s hard to say this at all—harder still with Martha here. “My concerns weren’t unfounded, but neither were they as critical as I’d assumed. If I could do it over, I’d make different choices. You’re the one who should be—”

Alive.

Recruiting this team.

_Leading_ them.

_I’d rather do this with you_, Bruce doesn’t say. It’s foolish. He doesn’t know the man. Even if he’d given him every chance, it’s possible they’d still have hated one another.

“Come over to the house, Mr. Wayne,” Martha says, giving the ground a little pat and then standing up. “You look like you’ve been out in the cold for too long.”

“Oh, I’m—”

“Tea,” Martha says, in a tone that leaves no room for argument. “It’ll warm you right up.”

Bruce doesn’t budge. He’s taken everything from her. She has no reason to extend any degree of tolerance in his direction, let alone kindness, and Bruce thinks it makes sense, now, that Clark Kent had become the man he was. He can’t accept this. What could he possibly say to—

“I’ll give you two a minute,” Martha says. “I’m sure you have more that needs talking out. I’ll wait by the gates. You catch up.”

And with a hint of a smile, she turns and walks back toward the cemetery entrance.

Bruce watches for a moment. There’s no better time to run, but—

But what would he be running from, now? She’s already seen him.

“You should be here,” Bruce tells Clark Kent bluntly. “It’s your godforsaken job to be—God, I fucked up. You should be here. You should be here, with them. With _her_. You’re a better man than I ever have been.” He curls his fingers into the earth like Martha had done before. It _is_ cold out. He can feel the chill of the frost soaking through the fabric of his dress pants. “I thought that this was what I wanted. I was a fool—manipulated and blinded by hatred. You should be here. Dammit—I _want_ you to be here.”

It all feels like some big cosmic joke.

Superman lives, and Bruce wants to kill him. Superman dies, and Bruce wants him alive.

He stands and dusts off his pant legs. Martha is by the gates, like she’d said.

He walks toward her, and she smiles.

**Present Day**

“Stay with me,” Bruce says, and Clark’s eyes sparkle. “I want you to. When you’ve been gone, I—you always come back, but I don’t want that. I don’t want you to go. I want to make this work.”

“Really?”

“Clark. Don’t make me say it again.”

“Just one more time,” Clark says, mischievous, but he’s leaning in closer.

“Stay with me,” Bruce repeats, because he means it.

Clark beams at him. “Okay,” he says. “I will.”

“Really?” Bruce asks, grinning now. “I might need to hear that again.”

Clark releases Bruce’s hands to cup his face instead. “You’re ridiculous.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Clark repeats, “and frustrating, and maddening, and wonderful, and I don’t want to leave you. Bruce. I…” Clark closes his eyes, but he doesn’t kiss Bruce—just rests his forehead against Bruce’s, hands still framing his jawline. “I’m happy you want this, too.”

“I did before.”

“You weren’t sure,” Clark says.

Bruce is never sure about this sort of thing. What he’s sure of is Clark's radiant smile, and the way it feels to wake up beside him. To see _that_, first thing—small miracles.

He’d do it every day if he could.

“I love you,” Clark murmurs, and Bruce kisses him gently, his hands trailing unhurriedly across Clark’s chest. “I missed you,” Clark says, when they break apart. “I’m glad you came to talk.”

“Me, too.”

“But we should go downstairs.”

“Now?” Bruce asks, fingertips coming to rest at Clark’s hips.

“Mom will want to know that you’re staying for breakfast.”

“I’m sure she already does,” Bruce says. “She’s very wise, your mother.”

“She is,” Clark agrees. “But I’m still going to tell her.” He leans up to press a kiss against Bruce’s forehead, lets go, and grins. “Are you coming?”

He makes for the doorway before Bruce can answer.

As if Bruce would do anything, now, but follow him.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this story is from a Justin Timberlake lyric, and I am long past being ashamed of it. Say Something is a bop. Clark's gonna put it on the workout playlist he sneaks into the gym while Bruce is busy flexing his Batman abs.
> 
> The questions here are borrowed from Mandy Len Catron's "[36 questions that lead to love](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/fashion/no-37-big-wedding-or-small.html)". I only used 20 for story pacing purposes.


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